A2Hosting VS BlueHost – Web Hosting Comparison

Set up as a modest web host in 2001, A2Hosting has been engaged in reseller, managed VPS, shared hosting and dedicated servers up till now. Locating two data centers in USA and Europe, this company has faith in offering the very type of hosting that webmasters need to succeed.

BlueHost, started business in 2003, has hosted millions of domains over the world with industry-leading service. In the meantime, according to BBB(Better Business Bureau) rating, this web host is rated an A, which is the most persuasive evidence for its first-class hosting.

In the following, there is a neutral and in-depth comparison between A2Hosting and BlueHost on shared hosting service, which is made from price, features, reliability, speed and customer service. Apart from those mentioned aspects, there are editorial ratings on the two hosting providers, which helps you to get a whole evaluation on their service. Now, proceed to the following parts.

Price & Plans

Investing heavily on developing and improving service, A2Hosting has released three shared hosting plans. In regards to price, this web host prices the plans from $7.99/mo, but now it bestows buyers a 51% discount which declines the price down to $3.92/mo. Note that to claim the discount, people need to register for its service by the following promotional link.

A2Hosting Promotional Link Activation

Likewise, BlueHost also offers three upgradable packages – Basic, Plus and Prime, which aims to different needs and demands. Originally, this web host sets the plans starting at $7.99/mo. But for the most popular Basic plan, it endows an up to 63% discount, which puts the price down to $2.95/mo only. Also, it requires visitors to go through the following promotional link.

BlueHost Promotional Link Activation

Risk-Free Online Deal

In order to ensure the great sense of risk-free and worry-free for making an online deal, both BlueHost and A2Hosting provide the 30 days money back guarantee. In this case, if you are not satisfied with either of them, you can cancel your account within the first 30 calendar days of registration and ask for the full refund. No reasons will be asked.

In addition, if you terminate your hosting account after the initial 30 days, you can also ask for the pro-rated money back based on the unused portion of the service.

Features

Here, the provided features by A2Hosting and BlueHost are also compared side by side as is displayed in the following table. Unless those specified, the mentioned features refer to the cheapest plan of the two companies, namely the Prime plan from A2Hosting and the Plus plan from BlueHost.

From the above table, we can reach the conclusion that both of A2Hosting and BlueHost are user-friendly by adopting the easy-to-manage cPanel and hassle-free auto-installer. Especially, the latter offers one free domain name and more secure protection measures including SiteLock, domain privacy and Spam protection.

Hosting Reliability

By utilizing the rock-solid web servers, partnering with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and setting up the advanced data centers, BlueHost has 100% confidence in achieving a high level of hosting reliability. As monitored, our tested site that is hosted with them is accessible online all the times. No downtime happened during the monitoring period.

To guarantee ultra-reliable hosting environment, A2Hosting claims to have its servers expertly optimized and tuned by dedicated engineers working aside 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Plus, this company makes its data centers fully endorsed with dual fiber entrance and multi-networks through global crossing, Cogent communications and Level (3). In consequence, it keeps a 99.99% network uptime in the past 30 days averagely.

Page Loading Speed

No one prefers the slow page loading speed. In this case, both BlueHost and A2Hosting have paid much attention to the hosting performance by utilizing a series of advanced technologies.

BlueHost, for instance, applies the advanced I/O segregation technology, with which yon be protected against some abusive neighborhoods sharing the same server machine. In this case, even if they suddenly overuse the server resources, undergo the traffic surge and mishandle something, your website running will not be negatively affected.

In addition, BlueHost has the long-term partnership with CloudFlare CDN. By activating this special service for free using your cPanel control panel, your webpage loading speed can be boosted at least 3 times faster.

As for A2Hosting, this web host adopts the solid state drives to improve the speed of your files, databases and the operating system. Besides, they also offer some exclusive technologies such as the Turbo Server, A2 Optimized Caching, A2 Optimized Software, Performance Plus and many more.

To get the actual server response time of BlueHost and its competitor, we have monitored their servers and systems for a long term. As a result, we find that the former beats down its competitor by keeping a successive record of 320ms server response time in the past 30 days. And the latter one keeps 397ms, which is displayed as follows.

Technical Support

Customer service is given the highest priority from A2Hosting and BlueHost. And they both employ a group of well-tailored and responsive technical workers who are accessible via phone call, email ticket and live chat. Plus, the two providers have all kinds of hosting-related solutions and answers in their self-help or knowledge base section, which suits customers who want to solve problems by themselves.

Final Judgement

By comparing A2Hosting and BlueHost from several aspects, we find that both of the two companies are feature-rich and support-responsive. The former one is fit for people looking for a cost-effective and ultra-reliable solution, and the latter one is recommended for webmasters hunting for a fast web host. Here, both of the two web hosts are worth a go.

I've been an experienced web developer, SEOer and technical writer since 2003. I worked in many international high-tech companies including Microsoft and Autodesk before 2012. Now I own a startup company in San Francisco, CA, focusing on developing websites and blogs to deliver exceptional results to global readers by leveraging the power of Internet.
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FTC Disclosure

We get commission from web hosting companies for referral and advertisement. However, this does not affect our unbiased web hosting reviews and insights. We never allow payments to influence our judgement. We always work hard and try our best to help people find the best cost effective web hosting deals at an affordable rate.